An Addiction to Psychopaths
by scifinerd4lyfe
Summary: My take on the 221b apartment scene in "His Last Vow" when John learns the truth about Mary from a weary and wounded but determined Sherlock Holmes. Thought it would make a nice addition to the final episode!
1. Chapter 1

The tall, skinny man in the enormous black overcoat blinked and almost forgot how to open his eyes again. Leaning heavily on the railing trailing the way up the stairs to 221B on Baker Street, Sherlock Holmes followed his best friend and his best friend's murderous wife to his flat.

He didn't want to admit to John that he was feeling worse than he had when he left the hospital. This conversation needed to happen, for both John and Mary's sake. And so he kept quiet as the silent pangs of pain in his chest threatened to incapacitate him.

Once he got to the doorway he gripped it tightly, worried slightly that he might fall over.

"Oh, Sherlock, oh goodness gracious. You look terrible!" Whispered Mrs. Hudson as she rounded the corner from the kitchen and saw her wounded tenant.

"Get me some morphine from your kitchen, I've run out." Sherlock said rather pointedly. His pain was trying his patience.

"I don't have any morphine!" Mrs. Hudson replied defensively.

Sherlock winced as another especially sharp pain ran up and down his chest. He closed his eyes for a moment and couldn't help it as his pain fueled his anger and he shouted, "Then what EXACTLY is the POINT of you!?"

Mrs. Hudson's exasperated response was lost to him as Sherlock tried to hide another wave of agony and instead tried to focus on what John was saying.

Sherlock tried his best to convince his friend that Mary at least warranted a client meeting. He had promised to help her and, even if he had to stand in this room with a bullet hole in his chest, no morphine and an increasingly alarming heart rate, he would make John understand.

"Fine, we'll do it your way," the doctor consented, still seething with anger and unable to keep the tone of betrayal from his voice. John pulled a chair to the middle of the room and took his seat.

Sherlock moved slowly, painfully, to his own chair and sat down slowly, putting a hand to his side, unable to mask the pang as his skin stretched when he sat down.

Sherlock noticed John eyeing him with worry, but just as soon as he had glimpsed at Sherlock, John's eyes again clouded in anger and he stared down his wife.

Sherlock waited for the conversation to begin, hoping, silently, that it would be over sooner rather than later.

**Stay tuned for Ch. 2 coming soon! Thank you so much for reading.**


	2. Chapter 2

Mary leaned over and placed a flash drive on the table beside her. Sherlock leaned forward a bit, his eyes squinting through the pain as he studied the initials "A.G.R.A" that were written on the device.

"A-G-R-A. What's that?" he asked quietly, beads of sweat starting to break out on his forehead. He alarmingly but quietly registered that his shirt underneath his coat felt wet, sticky—whether from sweat or blood he didn't know. Didn't want to know.

All that he wanted now was for John to understand that his wife had done her best to make something out of an impossible situation. Sherlock had barged in on her affairs and she had done the only thing possible to save her husband's best friend's life.

_Humanity!_ Sherlock thought to himself angrily as his breath hitched for a moment in response to another pang._Such emotional creatures, letting anger cloud their judgment. How can people live like that? _How was it that, he, Sherlock Holmes, a high-functioning sociopath with absolutely no interest in familial relationships like the ones John seemed to require had a more level head on Mary than her own husband had at the moment? How was it that even the great Sherlock Holmes knew what was best for John in this moment?

Mary cleared her throat, bringing Sherlock back into the apartment, forcing the consulting detective to push his pain away and listen.

"It's my initials," Mary replied, fearfully looking at her husband. John's glanced over at her and his eyebrows rose, his eyes staring at her accusingly.

_Humans could be so stubborn sometimes_. This thought kept swirling in Sherlock's head as he watched his friend's heart break with the truth of his wife pressing on him. Couldn't John see this was about Magnusson, not Mary?

"Everything about who I was in on there. If you love me, don't read it in front of me," said Mary sadly.

"Why?" John asked accusingly?

Mary's eyes welled up. "Because you won't love me when you're finished." Her voice broke, "and I don't want to see that happen." They both looked down at the flash drive. John grabbed it from the table and put it in his pocket.

Mary decided to get straight to business instead of linger on John's anger. She turned to Sherlock, her eyes flashing with sadness as she looked at his pale form. She pressed on, though.

"How much do you know already?" she asked with authority.

This is why Sherlock approved of Mary—and maybe why Mary had told John as soon as she met Sherlock that she liked him. They understood one another. She didn't bother to question his cleverness, and he understood that actions needed to be taken—sacrifices were necessary. They both knew that Magnusson did not deserve to live.

Sherlock breathed heavily as he answered, shifting in his chair slightly to try and alleviate the building pain in his chest.

"By your skill set you are—or were—an intelligence agent," he answered slowly, his voice low and strained.

His eyelids felt heavy. _Just a while longer_, he tried to convince himself. He had to make John understand. "Your accent is currently English but I suspect you are not. You're on the run from something. You've used your skills to disappear. Magnusson knows your secret which is why you were going to kill him. And I assume you befriended Janine in order to—" Sherlock clenched his hands on the armchair and shut his eyes tightly, his face screwed up in pain as another, much larger wave from his chest hit him. He was unable to hide it this time and let the pain enter his voice. "—get close to him," he finished, gasping and opening his eyes.

John made a move to help his friend, for a moment forgetting his anger in light of the situation. He stopped abruptly, though, as Mary—strong and steady, focusing only on the story, ignoring, for a moment, Sherlock's pain—answered clearly, "You could talk." Her voice was playful for once. She knew Sherlock forgave her and she was grateful.

Sherlock smiled in reply, amused that she knew the purpose of such a relationship. Clearly John was the only one he's fooled—even Janine had known he was using her. Poor, innocent John. Always thinking the best of people.

"Look at you two," John growled defensively. "_You_ should have got married."

Mary ignored her husband. He was being selfish, silly, really. Sherlock looked at John wearily. He understood nothing. Mary was perfect for John and John refused to acknowledge that.

Sherlock was tired, fed up with his pain, and desperate for John to understand. His chest hurt, his patience was almost gone, and his eyes were getting heavier and heavier, each time he blinked he found it more difficult to open them again. His heart was pounding in his chest. He knew he wouldn't last much longer. It was paramount that John understood before Sherlock returned to the hospital. They were all on the same page. Magnusson needed to be dealt with—and John's ego was the only thing keeping that from happening.

**Stay tuned for Ch. 3! Thanks so much for reading. :)**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hello, hello, hello! I just want to say THANK YOU to all you lovely readers who have been patient in waiting for this next chapter. The spring semester started up so my time has been a bit stretched, but it felt so good to be able to get back to this story. I hope it's long enough to satiate you all. Also thank you to everyone who reviewed. It really does mean a lot.**

**Finally-a shout out to the guest reviewer (I haven't figured out how to reply to you personally) but you are awesome! I really really appreciate your gumption and enthusiasm. Rock on, and please enjoy! :)**

John Watson was angry. _No_—angry didn't even begin to cut it. Angry was a small word, soft, weak, inadequate, and, for this situation, only covered the basic feelings that rushed through his heart, thoughts clouding over in his brain threatening to explode at any moment.

He couldn't believe it. How did he—of all people!—he who had lived with the great _Sherlock Holmes _(John was almost surprised when his mind spat that word out, fuming, almost sneering, seething) get roped into being conned by a murderous, lying, woman!

He couldn't help but think of Molly in this moment. Molly, who had been fooled by perhaps the greatest criminal mastermind the world had ever known, a man who had crafted layer upon layer of lies to deceive those around him. Moriarty had called himself Jim, pretended to be Molly's boyfriend—as well as gay to mess with Sherlock's head—and then turned out to be a murderer and a psychopath as well.

John felt a fool. How judgmental his thoughts had been towards Molly when he had found how Moriarty's true nature. _How could she not know?_ _How could she not have at least _suspected_?_ Were the thoughts that had raced around in his brain when Jim Moriarty true colors were revealed.

_What an arrogant sod_, John thought of himself, defeated. He had thought Molly such a blind fool, and, how ironic then, that he should turn out as such, too.

He had loved Mary. Or did he still? He didn't know. But he had loved her for a while at least. Like, really, _truly_ loved that woman. She pulled him out of his darkened life when Sherlock fell to his death (a façade for which John still wasn't entirely sure he had forgiven his friend completely). But Mary had been there when no one else had. She understood his pain, she sat with him during those dreary afternoons when his mind couldn't help the grief that settled itself in his heart and refused to let him even get off the couch. So she would come over and just sit with him. Just sit. She knew he didn't have words to express his pain but that he appreciated her company. And so she held his hand and became his beacon. His glimmer of hope. His foundation.

John felt shattered. He didn't know who to trust anymore. And why was Sherlock—Sherlock _BLOODY_ Holmes—defending her? She shot him! She straight up _shot_ him! If he had been the one to be shot, John knew he would be damned if he didn't at least give them the silent treatment until he had finished healing, for God's sake. It had been less than a _bloody week_ and already Sherlock was on Mary's side. He still had a bullet hole in his chest and yet he was defending the woman. John couldn't wrap his mind around it. Maybe it was the whole "high-functioning sociopath" thing. Sherlock Holmes didn't work on the same frequency as the rest of the world and so he didn't understand that normal society delegated the allowance of bitterness towards the person who knowingly inflicted physical injury on another. Maybe that was why Mary seemed to be able to form words at this point, too. Was she a sociopath as well? _It would just fucking figure_, John thought.

He didn't trust himself to say anything right now, not after his outburst when they had arrived in 221B. His best friend had been standing in the doorway (having taken quite a while to pull himself up the staircase to the flat), clutching the wall as if his life depended on it, skin unhealthily pale and eyes slowly getting more and more unfocused. The doctor in John disallowed him from ignoring thoughts of worry and concern for his friend, who really should have stayed in the hospital, but greater still was his anger. It took all of his willpower not to walk out of the room.

It just didn't seem fair. What had he ever done to deserve this? Sherlock seemed to think, "no harm done. Let's move on," was a fair motto to live by at the moment, though John found it anything but. His _wife_ had shot his _best friend_! How do you even process that? To hell with Magnusson and his confounded Apple Dur! To hell with his reign of blackmailing people! To hell even with this bloody case! Mary had shot Sherlock. And both of them seemed okay with the outcome of the situation. Strangely able to cope.

_Fucking psychopaths_, John muttered to himself. Had Sherlock been in a more physically-capable state-of-mind and Mary not so tense, perhaps they both would have corrected him, explaining the difference between psychopaths and sociopaths with Sherlock's favorite phrase "high-functioning" swirled in there somewhere. _High-functioning, my ass!_ John thought. It's hard even for the _Great Sod Sherlock Holmes_ to function properly with a bloody bullet hole in the flesh.

He couldn't help it. John's mind kept coming back to three words. _Bullet_. _Mary_. _Sherlock_. Those three words seemed so foreign and out-of-place and yet here, today, they fit so perfectly. No, not perfectly. It felt so wrong, yet it fit.

Anger flashed through his mind every few seconds, his heart beating rapidly, fists clenched, finding it difficult to even look at Mary in the eyes.

_But you know what, I have a right to be angry! I have a right to be bloody pissed off!_ John thought loudly in his head. Righteous anger. It's what his therapist called it. During one of the few times he found his feet carrying him to her office after the events of St. Bart's hospital rooftop, he had burst out angrily that he wished Moriarty were still alive, so he could kill that bastard himself, in the most gruesome and violent and painful of ways. He wanted vengeance for Sherlock's suffering.

"You have what we call Righteous Anger, John," her voice had cooed quietly. He always hated her tone. It seemed condescending, somehow. Like she was talking to a child. Like he needed to be coddled and held and that he needed to talk about his _feelings_. "You feel that you are owed a moral justice for what has been done to your friend. You think that since Sherlock was your mate and Moriarty is responsible for his death, that makes you justified to commit murder. That makes you immune to the moral line. Anger is good, John. But hate is unhealthy. It's a poison and you need to learn to let go."

John had held desperately onto that anger for as long as possible. And then he had met Mary.

But now look at the mess that turned out to be. His friend sagging slightly in the armchair, breath coming quicker each minute. He was shifting uncomfortably in an attempt to alleviate the pain from his _bullet hole_, John thought, glancing at Sherlock.

John was pulled from his spewing thoughts by a phrase which caught him by surprise. Sherlock was saying something to him.

"You're using what happened to me to fuel your anger for Mary. You are mad at her for causing me pain and so you're letting that be the forefront of your hate. But what you really hate, John Watson, is that fact that she lied to you. Your posture—the way you're angling yourself away from her and your clenched fists and the fact that you can't even meet your own wife's eyes gives away the fact that you are very upset. Using my own experience and the fact that when we were on that train and I was trying to defuse the bomb and you thought I couldn't do it I could see in your eyes that what hurt you the most was the fact that I had made you suffer in grief for two years before approaching you again. You hate liars, John."

John's eyes snapped up at Sherlock.

"What do you know of what I hate?" he growled at his friend. Sherlock closed his eyes for a second, apparently regretting that John wasn't understanding a vital point. Sherlock, paler now than ever, grasped the side of his chest, as if John's words were causing him even more pain.

John loathed when Sherlock got all high and mighty and liked to parade around his pleasure at the fact that he thought he understood people better than they understood themselves.

"You think that if you can read body language and eyebrow movements and postures and things that means you understand me? Well, not this time Sherlock. Not this time." John was almost screaming by now. Again.

Sherlock drew in a shaky breath, eyes clenching tight for a bit as he shifted in his seat, hunching over, a hiss of pain abandoning his hard-sought-facade, but his voice was solid and strong when he spoke.

"John—" he started but the doctor cut him off.

"No, Sherlock. No. I'm done. With all of this. Just no." Sherlock leaned back in his chair and looked at Mary. John fought the urge to stand up and run out of the room. He felt stifled, pressured, cornered. His skin was crawling by now, so desperate it was in fighting the desire to escape, flee the two people he had once cared most about in the world.

But right now he hated both of them. Mary most of all. Sure, he was worried about Sherlock, but that little mind-reading stunt he had just pulled made John furious. What did Sherlock understand about love? Or fear? As the great detective so often liked to point out, he didn't think like most people. He didn't want to be seen as human.

Well now, John was going to give him that satisfaction.

"Just let us finish, please." Sherlock persisted. John was caught off guard at the softness of Sherlock's tone. Almost as if he was pleading. He knew John was angry, he knew that he needed patience.

John sighed, unable to retain his anger whilst his friend was in such obvious discomfort. _The doctor in me_, John admitted to himself.

Another sigh. Then, "Fine. Fine, Sherlock. But this is for you, not _her,_" he spit that last word out like a poison. Sherlock sat upright a bit more, looking at Mary once more, who's eyes had begun to water again at John's harsh words. She cleared her throat though, and the conversation began again.

**Thanks for reading! Chapter 4 to come soon!**


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